Hi SeanMc,
Here's my advice, my friend...
If you want to learn how to ride a bike, you get on a bike and ride it.
If you want to learn how to eat with chopsticks, you pick up a set of chopsticks and eat with them.
Language learning is the same. There are four skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing.
If you want your listening to improve, you listen to people (to media, to podcasts like SP101, etc).
If you want your speaking to improve, you talk to people (especially people you care about)
If you want your reading to improve, you start reading stuff that interests you.
If you want your writing to improve, you start communicating with people in the written form.
SP101 is a podcast, and what listeners tell me is that when they stick with a podcast form, their listening comprehension improves incredibly over a period of a few months.
SP101 is not a speaking, reading, or writing service, although we do try to provide a pronunciation module, some reading materials, and a forum for you to practice your written Spanish.
So the best we can do here at SP101 are provide some podcasts that are instructive enough to teach you, and entertaining enough so that listening is a pleasure, rather than a chore. Apart from that, I hope we can encourage you and motivate you to work on the other three skills. I'm also hoping we can build this forum and the lesson comments up so that the community becomes a resource for your language learning.
There are a lot of people out there that look at language learning as a pile of work; they look at it as something that they can dedicate a certain number of hours to, drilling and studying and memorizing.
Me, I'm not one of those people. My method is to a) get really good instruction, b) find people I care about who will talk to me in the target language on a regular basis, and c) listen to and read things that I find entertaining. It helps that I studied linguistics and teaching, but you should keep in mind that all over the world, every day, people learning language without any instruction at all--their first language--and they do it mostly through relationships.
To address your language hurdle that you described... that effort that it takes you to translate into English, translate back into Spanish, and that frustration you feel by not being able to maintain a normal conversation... what I recommend that you do is to put yourself in that situation more often. Some people learn to overcome that with daily exposure. Eventually, you'll give up on trying to translate everything for yourself, and learn how to go with your best guess, which is usually right. In the end, if what you're practicing is translation, which you don't want... practice guessing, and you'll become a better guesser. Take my word for it, a good guesser is much easier and much more interesting to talk to than a good translator.
I can go on for hours talking about what it takes to learn a language successfully. I hope this answers some of your questions, but I also hope we continue this conversation as you find your way past this hurdle!
